Great Couples Counseling in Marina, CA. Therapy to heal relationships.

I provide therapy for couples who are married, who are engaged to be married and for those who are dating or cohabiting. A relationship personality profile is provided to all couples, followed by sessions on communication, intimacy/connectedness, trust. These sessions are always personalized to the couple's issues. I offer a "Tools for the Marriage Toolbox" package for pre-marital couples that can be done in two sessions; a valuable wedding gift to each other!

Discover how you can go from rejected to connected! Did you know the reactivity you experience is not your fault? (This is one of the main things that causes fights and arguments. It's when you feel out of control, & it leads to doing or saying things you regret, impulsivity, & leads to hurt & separation). I show couples how they can reduce the personal & relational reactivity they experience & increase feeling peaceful, calm, understood, validated, safe, accepted, & connected. I help couples discover their attachment strategies (how we feel safe & get our needs met). This is necessary in order to create lasting improvement, safety, trust, understanding, & connection, in your relationship.

For COUPLES THERAPY THAT WORKS, choose a COUPLES THERAPIST - I am trained in evidence based EFT & powerful couples modalities such as PACT & NVC. AND I teach you an entire COUPLES COURSE as we do therapy. Learn about neuroscience, trauma, communication, attachment & more. Often one person feels unsupported & unimportant & “pursues” the other for communication & connection, while the other feels like they’re never enough, can’t please their partner & usually withdraws & shuts down. Break this painful cycle & take your relationship to the next level - Create a safe haven & secure bond with a true experience of partnership. Feel seen, heard & that YOU MATTER! Develop a WE not just ME mindset.

Let me guess. One partner feels alone and like they don't matter and the other feels they are always being criticized and can't get anything right. The more one asks for the other to show up, the more the partner disappears physically and emotionally. You both bicker and fight and the idea of sitting and just hanging out seems elusive, if not impossible. Something like this? Often we crave connection but are blocked by the pain and the history that gets in the way. Small fights about little things become battles that highlight our struggle to have our basic relational needs met. I can help you get under the bickering to the parts crying out for connection- to an enriching relationship.

Arrive together on the first and you may stay together. I insist that couplescome to at least 8 sessions together before deciding to bailout. Therapy is a way to confess your sessions and your thoughts to each other with me as a buffer. Couples who come jointly will sometimes be separated during the session to share their thoughts with me alone first. Then I'll encourage disclose of those thoughts to the partner. By making listings of reasons to stay and separate, I help clients organize their thoughts from the get go.

My work with couples is developmental and focuses on self-confrontation, differentiation, and collaboration. Individuals in the partnerships that I work with take responsibility for their own mental health and happiness and learn to grow themselves up in a way that brings goodness and intimacy to their relationship. I can help them overcome gridlock and sexual challenges to strengthen the relationship and reignite desire.

I work with couples to repair and rebuild their relationships. My practice focuses on providing couples with the tools they need to create a healthier and more connected relationship. I believe in an integrative approach that is rooted in evidence-based therapies such as Emotionally Focused Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and Psychodynamic Therapy. My goal is to help couples find a deeper understanding of one another and create a more meaningful relationship. I strive to provide a safe, non-judgmental, and respectful environment that encourages honest communication and healing.

Couples often come to counseling when they are on the verge of breaking up. I hope that you will find the way to counseling before you reach this point so that we can find better ways to look at and change old patterns that seem to have you stuck. And even if both agree it is time to separate, counselimf can be helpful to find healthier ways in the process so that we don't have to recreate old, dysfunctional patterns in our next relationships. I invite both partners to utilize the safety of the therapeutic set-up to look at the deeper underlying issues that have brought you to this point in your current relationship